December 3, 2010 - 11:08 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
Is Dave Semple, the General Manager of the City of Richmond’s Parks & Recreation, itching to run as a candidate for City Council in next year’s election? I am hearing rumblings that he is, and if these rumours are true, there should be a careful examination of the decisions he is making in his current role.
Furthermore, what is behind former BC Liberal MLA Gary Collins’ involvement in putting together a new civic political movement in Richmond? I hear that it is not necessarily as a result of any one individual, but rather a desire to inject new blood into a political scene that has become stagnant according to local observers.
Both of these questions will be delved into on CivicScene over the next few weeks.
November 30, 2010 - 1:22 pm |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
UPDATE: Barb Justason tears a strip off of Mike Klassen from City Caucus for his misleading headline about her poll’s findings.
I would like to offer some general reactions to the just released Justason Market Intelligence poll.
First of all, you have got to be kidding me with this:
If Frances Bula is correct and the NPA is indeed “looking to prove, desperately these days,” that “potential NPA candidates,…have a fighting chance to beat Vision Vancouver,” then I think that by all means they should continue to use these results, and this question in particular, as their enticement.
Read the rest of this entry »
November 27, 2010 - 11:25 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
The campaign has been successful - Clark is set to announce the start of her leadership bid the week after next.
CivicScene has just received word that Christy Clark will announce her candidacy for the BC Liberal leadership the week after next.
Sources say that she will spend next week submitting her letter of resignation to CKNW, working out the terms of her departure, and filing the necessary paperwork with the party.
CivicScene has also learned that Mike McDonald, the former B.C. Liberal caucus communications director in Victoria, is rumoured to have accepted the job as Clark’s campaign manager.
McDonald will be known to some political observers from the allegations of the defense team in the Basi-Virk trial, which claimed that he was supervising political dirty tricks directly out of a government office, including stacking phone calls to talk radio shows on CKNW. These allegations, made by Kevin McCullough, the former lawyer for Bob Virk, were of course never proven in court.
I will post more details on the Clark campaign structure as (and if) they become available.
November 26, 2010 - 12:34 pm |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
These wo former competitors have since formed a strong working relationship within City Hall, giving Vision peace within the caucus.
The landscape of BC politics right now is like nothing that observers have ever experienced before. A Premier has just stepped down, and his party is now at the beginning stages of what should be a hotly contested leadership contest. The stakes of this race are huge, as the winner becomes the new leader of the province, and the one tasked with pulling the BC Liberals out of the toilet.
Far be it for the ridiculous New Democratic Party to take an advantage of such a situation, as they are embroiled in a partial caucus revolt against their own leader. The dissidents are determined to push the envelope until Carole James walks out the door, which might happen soon with a leadership review likely coming in the new year.
If we turn our attention to the municipal scene in Vancouver, even the NPA continues to struggle with factions within their party, even as they try to rebuild the organization back into a competitive force for next year’s election. The recent party fundraiser saw Park Board Commissioner Ian Robertson and his silent supporters draw a line in the sand between them and the Sam Sullivan loyalists, while delivering a speech that showed he was most definitely going to take a shot at being the party’s Mayoral candidate. Meanwhile, Councillor Suzann Anton continues to cling to the Sullivan faithful for her base of support, making a showdown between the two an inevitability, and rehashing of all the nastiness that ensued between the Peter Ladner and Sullivan forces back in 2008. This is of course just the latest episode in a party that for many years has cannibalized its own in the name of personal politics of ambition.
Which brings me to Vision Vancouver. For a party that continues to grow as a coalition of progressive forces, the caucus has been one of the most peaceful that Vancouver’s civic political scene has seen in several terms.
Read the rest of this entry »
